Post navigation

Exploring Audio Dramas: From Quiet, Please to Limetown

Lately I’ve been looking for new ways to occupy my time during dinner. Usually I like to watch “TV” (on my computer — I haven’t owned an actual television in years), but I’ve been trying to save money on streaming services like Netflix, especially since there isn’t much on said services I really want to see at the moment.

This past October I had the idea for a seasonally appropriate diversion. One of my favourite ever pieces of content in The Secret World was the Halloween mission “The Broadcast,” which involved a series of haunted radios. Exorcising all nine radios awarded the player with an in-game item they could use to listen to the audio dramas playing on the radios at any time.

It’s an incredibly cool idea, but I’d never really gotten around to sitting down and listening to them, with the exception of the famous Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast. I suppose the idea of radio plays just seemed a bit quaint in this day and age, though I now regret that rather narrow-minded view.

At any rate, this year I decided to finally dig out my Paranormal Shortwave and listen to the remaining eight dramas. They were a bit hit and miss, and some really haven’t aged well, but on the whole it proved a surprisingly enjoyable experience.

It takes a little getting used to, but once you become accustomed to the lack of visual stimuli, it’s amazing how easy it is to get lost in the stories. There’s something deeply immersive about pure audio.

I find there’s something about the audio format that makes horror much more palatable for me. Normally I’m not much of a horror fan, my delirious love for TSW notwithstanding. But as I’ve talked about before, I do enjoy horror that can create a sense of ambiance. Something that’s spooky, rather than scary.

Audio is less immediate and yet somewhat paradoxically more immersive than most other forms of fiction, and that hits a perfect sweet spot for delivering the kind of ambient experience I seek from horror.

My positive experiences with Quiet, Please and the other dramas in TSW left me wanting more. I was already peripherally aware that the audio drama format is undergoing something of a low key renaissance and that there were many free audio dramas online, so I began researching them.

When I looked for recommendations, one name came up over and over: Limetown.

From its description, I took Limetown to be a supernatural mystery in the vein of TSW, and I jumped on it. I’ve spent the last few weeks getting caught up, and I’ve now enjoyed every episode of the two seasons that have been produced so far.

Limetown blew me away out of the gate. The voice acting, the mystery, and the sheer ambiance of it was just impeccable. It’s strange to praise the sound design of an audio drama since sound design is basically all it is, but still, the sound design of Limetown is flawless. The subtle background sounds and foley effects put you in the moment so brilliantly.

I think it’s fascinating that at no point has Limetown given any significant physical description of its main character, Lia Haddock, yet I can picture her perfectly in my mind.

I will say that as time went on my love for Limetown did wain a bit. Going in, I was worried it would be another story where questions keep getting piled on without any answers, but it actually ended up being the opposite extreme. Limetown is perhaps a bit too quick to offer answers and resolve its big questions.

Also, I found it slowly became less about the speculative elements of the story and gravitated more towards being a simple thriller a la Jason Bourne or its ilk. As a sci-fi/fantasy nerd, that disappointed me.

That being said, it’s still pretty damn good. All the praise above regarding voice acting and sound design remains true throughout, and it never fails to be a thrilling, intense story. It might not have 100% lived up to the promise of its first few episodes, but at the end of the day I’ve only downgraded Limetown from “absolute masterpiece” to “pretty good and definitely worth your time.”

There’s no word yet on if there will be a third season of Limetown, but I certainly hope for one. The story is there, waiting to be told.

The producers seem to have ambitions to make this a whole franchise. There’s already a prequel novel (which I will probably read at some point), and in theory there’s supposed to be a TV series at some point (on Facebook of all places).

For my part, I need to find a new audio drama to listen to.

I feel silly for not pursuing the idea long ago. As I said, I have been aware of audio dramas for some time. I produced* a short series of them when I was a teenager, for Pete’s sake, and I’ve also listened to Blizzard’s forays into the medium with its audio Legion tie-ins.

*(By which I mean did very little and somehow got nearly all of the credit.)

Well, better late than never. Now, I understand the appeal. Now, I have heard the future.

I’m a big fan of old-time radio dramas; have the original “War of the Worlds” radio play on CD, as well as Mercury Theatre productions of “Dracula”, “A Christmas Carol” and other MT productions. I also have “Weird Stories” and other random old radio plays, including a couple of Doctor Who audio dramas. I’m a big fan of letting the imagination fill in the nooks and crannies.

Radio drama isn’t a thing of the past (although radio serials may be). I’ve been listening to radio drama all my life, the huge majority of it newly-recorded and broadcast to a mainstream national audience. BBC Radio 4 has had an afternoon drama slot Mondays to Fridays literally as long as I can remember. I grew up with it in the background when I was a child in the 1960s and I still listen to it when I get the chance today. Just about every conceivable type of genre is covered, from kitchen sink through police procedural to science fiction and experimental.

Most of the plays are one-offs but there have been many series, one of the most interesting recently being the Pilgrim plays by Sebastien Baczkiewicz, some very atmospheric and spooky fantasy. The main drawback with R4 plays is the limited rights used by the BBC, presumably to keep costs down and to attract the astonishing range of world-class actors they routinely get to appear in them. Most plays are only broadcast a handful of times and then disappear although these days some do resurface on the re-run service, R4Extra. The Pilgrim series is available on CD from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pilgrim-Collected-Radio-fantasy-drama/dp/1785292870 – or at least some of it…

Being both a fan of radio drama and a nostalgist for things I never experienced, I have also listened to a lot of “Golden Age” radio serials, mostly American and mostly from the 30s, 40s and 50s. There’s a great selection at https://archive.org/details/oldtimeradio . If you like detective shows I particularly recommend Johnny Dollar, especially the period when it goes to stories told over five fifteen-minute episodes rather than a single half-hour.

(Second attempt to post comment – this line added to avoid “You have already said this”)

Reblogged this on barrythewhitewiz and commented:
I’ve always enjoyed radio plays, be they dramas, comedies, thrillers, or historical retellings. I didnt even know Blizzard was getting into the mix, and that just highlights some of the creativity thats left over in the company even as they seem to falter.